There are some events that form a curve in the road but one so gentle it is only later that you think, yes, how could I not have realised it was at that point that the road started to arc, that I was at the beginning of a long slow bend that would take me in a completely different direction?

I stepped around the bedroom gingerly as I gathered my clothes for that day, as if someone had broken a glass in there and I was not quite sure the carpet had been hoovered properly. Matty was in the kitchen, I could hear him. The radio was on. He was humming along to it, tunelessly and absently, in the way he did, as if his mind was elsewhere and he was only half following the melody. Suddenly he called out.

‘Lisa!’

‘Ye-es …’ I called back, pulling my towel a little tighter around me.

‘Lisa …’ He was still calling my name as he stepped into the bedroom. ‘Oh good, you’re done.’ He was naked but for an apron, a very old navy blue one I had been given for Christmas by my parents years ago. It would have been crumpled and stuck at the back of a drawer – I’d forgotten I even had it. It was a sight so surprising that I broke into a smile.

‘What?’ he said, grinning back at me. ‘What?’

I gestured towards the apron.

‘Oh,’ he said, looking down at himself, as if it surprised him too. ‘That was what I was coming to ask you!’

‘What?’

‘How many eggs do you want?’

‘You’re making me breakfast?’ I could not help the edge of incredulity in my voice, although he’d made me breakfast often enough before. It was that I had just been thinking of him one way and here he was, countering my thoughts, as if he could tell.

He crossed the bedroom towards me and kissed my damp nose. ‘Yes, I’m making you breakfast, silly. Mmm, you smell nice. Put your kimono on cos I’m frying the eggs now and everything else is ready. One or two?’

‘Two, please.’